


A Light to Guide You Home

by Orichalxos



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21745990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orichalxos/pseuds/Orichalxos
Summary: On the ride back from Mejis, Cuthbert has to find a way to bring Roland's wandering soul back.
Relationships: Cuthbert Allgood/Roland Deschain
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Light to Guide You Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Midnight_Run](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Midnight_Run/gifts).



It is the bridge over the Xay that makes Alain and Cuthbert realize they have to do something. 

The return from Mejis has more in common with a funeral procession than a posse. Roland will eat, ride, step away from the camp to void and return, maneuver around obstacles...but never speak. Never respond. 

At first Cuthbert and Alain hope that this is a sign of improvement; after all, he’d gone from corpse-like and unresponsive to blank-eyed and moderately aware. 

Perhaps all they need to do is wait. Perhaps the ride away from Mejis (and what remained there; the burnt tracery of their mission, her ashes still warm) and toward Gilead will clear Roland’s eyes and give him time to wake, like a sleeper after the fever breaks.

They ride at night, parallel to the main road, as fast as they dare. 

Everything is inverted from their ride out. Alain, constantly trying to reach Roland with his _touch_ , stumbles over roots and leads them into closed gullies. Cuthbert is crypt-silent. And Roland...the heart of their ka-tet, the core of their friendship...his flat stare is the opposite of the deep glances Cuthbert has come to need, the blue eyes seeking deep into your core.

“He’s barely even there, Alain. We’re bringing a corpse back to Gilead, and I’m not eager to hear the voice of his father.” 

“Not empty,” says Alain. “He’s...closer than he was.” They both look to Roland across the banked fire. One hand holds the glass ball, a thumb absently stroking it like the head of a cat; the other mechanically lifts a strip of jerky to his lips as he slowly eats.

“Might as well be on the moon. That thing’s taking his heart.” 

“Not...quite.” Alain moves over next to Roland, flipping a corner of his serape over the glass ball before resting his hand on Roland’s warm, dry forehead. “I can feel him - far away, but not lost. And not burned away, either. It’s more like...a fish, on a line. Or a kite high up in the clouds. He’s still himself. We just have to wait for him to come back.”

Cuthbert spits and makes a rude gesture at the sky. _And if he never does?_ he thinks. He can feel it, though not as well as Alain; the ties that make them ka-tet have already undergone so much breaking and reforming, they are thin and stretched. 

Cuthbert hates knowing his part in shattering and remaking the ka-tet of three into the ka-tet with Susan and Sheemie, both lost, lost. Like a bag stretched to its limits, then emptied, their old ties cannot simply return to what they were. If there is to be something new between him and Alain and Roland, it cannot be the ties of boyhood from before Mejis, nor can it be the desperate group of five, minus two. 

“Waiting may not be enough, Al,” he finally says.

\--

The next day proves him right. 

They reach the bridge above the Xay, spend the better part of the day coaxing their horses across each plank. It’s Cuthbert’s idea to cut the bridge, to force any pursuers to take the long way around. 

As they sever the guy-ropes, Cuthbert hears Alain gasp a second before he feels it himself. He looks up to see the last of the ropes coming apart, the smacking of the rungs of the bridge against the walls of the canyon sharp in his ears ( _snapsnapsnap)_ , and suddenly the ties of ka, the kite-line holding Roland is fraying.

The path back to Mejis - the path back to Susan’s memory - severs in front of him, and Roland’s face takes on the first new expression in a week of travel: despair. Either his spirit is about to fly free entirely, lost in Maerlyn's Grapefruit, or he's about to pitch himself headfirst into the canyon.

 _We’re losing him_ , Cuthbert realizes, and springs up to hold Roland’s shoulders. Alain is rushing to do the same, holding Roland up as they both feel him spiralling away, away from his body and from them, into some unknown pink-tinged nightmare. 

Alain’s face goes grey as he reaches out with the touch harder than ever before. Cuthbert looks wildly around while gripping Roland by the collar - he can’t do what Alain does, he can’t do anything, all he can do is shoot and blame and shout and make stupid jokes - 

_Have to try_ , Cuthbert thinks, and he starts shouting at Roland. “Get back here - maggot! For your father’s sake! Don’t you drift off, you pustulent weakling snapsack! Off to play hooky while the rest of us work? Keep hold of that line, you mewling crap-sniveling child, or I’ll come in there and yank you back down myself!” 

It is as if Cort seizes control over Cuthbert’s throat. What had begun as Cuthbert’s childhood imitations of Cort had fermented into a full-grown Voice. The result is so startling to everyone - including the far-off soul of Roland - that the kite-line stays solid. Still thin and frail, but enough to keep Roland’s lost heart from flying away. At least for the moment.

\--

They camp just far enough away from the Xay that the snapped guy-ropes are no longer visible. 

“We have to bring him back,” Alain says. “We can’t know that he’ll get better once we return, and if he arrives like this he’s bait for enemies of the king. He’s still there, but I was wrong - that line is getting weaker.”

“Can’t you do something with your -” Cuthbert makes an ambiguous gesture.

“I am doing something.” An unusual note of frustration edged Alain’s voice, and Cuthbert nods in understanding. The grey tinge has not left Alain’s skin, and he can barely focus on the world around him. “It’s not enough. I can keep him tied but can’t call him back. We have to find some way to guide him home.”

“What do you mean, we? I can’t reach around in his head like you, Al. All I can do is lead us home - at least on this side of the Xay, we might be able to travel by day again.” Cuthbert kicks at the dirt and snarls. “That’s what I can do. Should I shout at him again? Throw a punch? Otherwise I can fetch firewood and make sure he comes back from the jacks!”

Alain sighs wearily and huddles down next to the still empty-eyed Roland. “I don’t know either. Come up with something. I can’t do this forever.” 

\--

The next morning brings inspiration. Alain has spent a sleepless night, constantly reaching out, and the circles under his eyes are dark and puffy. As he shuffles to pack up camp, he surprises a badger picking its way along a windbreak of trees. 

The badger, affronted but not hostile, trundles out of camp with a kind of wet dignity, pausing only to exchange blank stares with Roland. Amused by the sight, Cuthbert quotes: “Hile, Sir Throcken, and may thy path be blessed by Eld and lead thy questing home.” He returns to packing camp.

When Cuthbert looks up, Roland stands at his shoulder, eyes still blank but his expression different. Not despairing or terrified; intent. Maybe even expectant. 

Cuthbert takes a deep breath. What was it he had just said? What does Roland want? 

Ah. He clears his throat. 

He begins without meeting Roland’s gaze, as if it were simply talking to himself. 

“Once, in the bright dawning of the world, when the Knights of Eld held court, it came to pass that Queen Rowena had need of a champion. This is the story of how a billy-bumbler met the Table of Eld, and how Queen Rowena’s silver locket was lost and found and lost again...”

Roland’s expression never changes through the whole story, but by the end of it both Alain and Cuthbert know that he’s listening. A little closer than he was before. 

By the time they rest that night, Cuthbert has scrabbled through his memory for three more stories, and Roland has listened to each with more attention than he had paid to anything save the glass ball. 

Sore-voiced, Cuthbert gulps down water at camp that night. “That’s what’s caught him, Al. Roland hungers for stories. Vannay always said so; he’d demand stories like a baby bird calling for more feed.” 

“It’s definitely brought him closer. Like pebbles marking a path. Or like a candle in a window.” 

“But I don’t know many more. Roland could recite nearly any one he’d heard, but - I’m running out. That last one, I couldn’t remember how it was supposed to end; I just added an ending from another tale where I couldn’t remember the beginning. I made that all up. What if I can’t remember more?”

“He listened harder to that one than any before it. It...caught at him more than the others. I think because it was new." Alain shrugs, still a little grey. “It’s your gift, Bert. You could talk a hawk out of the sky. Come up with new ones.”

\--

So begins what Cuthbert will always privately think of as the Candelight Ride. Every morning he finishes a tale, starts a new one; every evening he finishes that, starts a new one. 

Now Cuthbert’s unnatural silence during the day is not for stealth, nor for mourning and fear, but for thinking: how to string together the right words to craft stories, ones that would cast a light to direct Roland’s wandering soul back home.

The first few are especially difficult, as Cuthbert tries to remember all the tales of Eld. His revision of _Taris and Iseau_ ends abruptly when Alain points out that perhaps tragic stories of lost loves might mire Roland deeper in his wandering. 

It becomes easier when Cuthbert throws tradition and fairy tale to the wind and begins inventing his own. He takes fragments of stories he remembered, daydreams and images from his past, and starts stringing them together. 

_Easier_ is not _easy ,_ as well you know, Constant Reader. Cuthbert swiftly discovers how much effort goes into spinning words into tales, keeping threads of stories together, picking which scene to play and which to skip. 

“Roland, listen and hear me well; this is the adventure of the only gunslinger to walk east o’ the Bear, west o’ the Turtle, and the speaking blade he kept at his side.”

“Roland, rest thy feet and join me by the fire tonight; I call this one The Boy Who Caught a Ghost in His Teeth.” 

Roland has always loved stories, but never been imaginative in the least. If anything, he dislikes talemakers, and has always spoken of them as lazy. As if the stories simply existed, and the talemaker's duty was to merely repeat them. Cuthbert harbors a fear in the back of his mind that this talemaking will make Roland think less of him, if it succeeds. 

Alain takes comfort from the stories as well, and more often than not is listening just as eagerly. The grey tinge to his face disappears slowly, and he begins to add his own comments (to Cuthbert’s pride and irritation). 

“Roland, hie near and prick up thy ears, for the tale of forty-seven loyal retainers and their quest for revenge upon those who had goaded their lord into treason.”

“Roland, Alain, listen and see me well, for this is the story of the devils’ way-house: how a lad and his mother escaped the demon caretakers of the way-house, that devoured his father in the ice and snow.”

There are missteps. One evening he tries to weave some kind of reference to Maerlyn’s Grapefruit into the story, trying to flatter it into letting Roland go. Afterwards he never quite remembers the story that he wove, except for a clot of ill-made verse praising the color pink “halfway between the White of bone, the Red of blood”. He and Alain spend the night retching, and what sleep they have is filled with pink-tinged dreams of death in hopeless battles. 

Another night Alain chastises him for a story that seemed to have no clear ending. “Did you run out of words at last, or were you just being lazy?” Cuthbert responds with venom, and they devolve into a shouting match about how the story should have ended in front of empty-eyed Roland laying down in his bedroll. 

The morning after, both are sheepishly apologetic as they saddle up. Alain allows that as life itself goes on endless, so it makes sense that stories might as well. Cuthbert gives his own apology sideways, to Roland as Alain overhears, saying that he knows Roland is fond of tales, not lazy talemakers like himself. 

A few days outside of Gilead, Cuthbert tries a riskier story, pulling together his anger at the way the barflys treated Sheemie and at Susan’s terrible end, with a revenger’s tragedy he half-remembers. 

The result is dark, and Alain looks shocked as Cuthbert finishes “Catherine’s Bloody Dance.” Roland is just as intent and blank and before. But the telling looses an ugly knot in Cuthbert’s chest, spilling out his own grief and fury at those who’d mock and mistreat the weak. 

Cuthbert sleeps soundly that night, and when he wakes the next day, he has the seed of an idea for the next tale. He will tell

_a noble quest for the Dark Tower | a journey to bring one’s beloved home_

and that will surely cast a light into Roland’s wandering mind. It has to; another day’s travel will see them nearly home, and to their painful duty in restoring Roland to his father’s house. 

They make camp late, after night falls. When dawn comes, it will illuminate the road ahead, and the towers of Gilead will be in sight. The fire they make is small, and Alain and Cuthbert sit knee-to-knee with Roland. Each takes his hand. Alain closes his eyes, reaching out with the touch; Cuthbert takes a deep breath.

_If it’s ka, we’ll bring him home_ ; he thinks, and begins his story. 

It is masterful. Cuthbert finds his voice moving into the verse of high epics, as he tells a history of those who have sought the Dark Tower. 

Through shadow, and drought, and blood; through fire, and doom, and ice; comes the seeker, to the field at the end of all worlds. Nothing would stand in his way, not time nor peril. Danger after danger he faced, in the name of the Tower. 

Finally he finishes: “Thus riding in the sunset land, over the wastes he came / in scarlet fields, his horn he winds, and calls the Tower’s name.”

Call all their names, thinks Cuthbert. Let nothing hold us back. For the first time he feels the same urgency that moved in Roland’s voice when he spoke of the Tower back in Mejis. 

(And if that urgency is also fueled by a faint pink flicker that has touched Cuthbert’s own dreams on this long road? So it goes.) 

He clasps Roland’s shoulder and leans in close, pressing forehead to forehead. “Call all their names, Roland. No matter what it takes, we will walk with you, right unto the clearing at the end of the path.” 

Shaking with the intensity of the promise he’s making, Cuthbert pulls back, just as Alain whispers: “He’s coming home.”

\--

_Constant Reader, you should know by now: things are not always as simple as a completed quest. Perhaps that was the story Cuthbert tells._

_Or perhaps it is this one._

_It begins haltingly. A tale of playmates, best friends, beloveds; separated and torn apart, one of them tempted away by royalty and great promises. The other picks up the friend's sigul, and begins a quest to bring them home._

_As Cuthbert slowly picks his way through the story, the quest is sometimes allegorical, sometimes heroic, sometimes domestic. Talking animals and lost memories and friends willing to make any bargain to find each other. Sometimes the beloved is on their own quest; sometimes they are less of a person and more of a place, standing at the end of worlds in a field of roses._

_Finally the hero and the beloved are facing their final challenge together: not a foe, but a vast riddle with a thousand possible answers. Over and over again they try, over and over again they fail, each time a little stronger, each time a little more tired._

_Cuthbert can feel the same weariness: over and over he’s tried these stories, over and over Alain has reached out to call Roland home. If there will be no happy ending here, he must perforce make one, decides Cuthbert._

_He finishes: “And as they shifted the letters of ice one last time, the pieces fell into place; they knew the answer, the answer was love, and they woke each other with a kiss.”_

_Try again, and again, and again, thinks Cuthbert, again, and tears spill down his cheeks. He falls out of the story, and begs, “Roland, will not you see me? Will not see me well? I would blow the Horn of Eld if it would bring thee back, Roland. I would carry it to the Tower itself if winding it there would call thee home.”_

_In a last desperate hope, Cuthbert brings his other hand up to Roland’s face, staring deep into those eyes unblinking. “Is’t not enough that I and Alain are here still?”_

_He takes a deep breath. “Is’t not enough that I love thee, Roland?”_

_Burning with the story, with the last intensity of their childhood dreams and the tangled wants of adolescence, Cuthbert cups Roland’s face in his hands and kisses him._

_Roland’s lips taste of road-dust, warm, open against his. For a second Cuthbert imagines he can taste Susan’s kisses upon Roland’s lips, and his double-sided mire of jealousy, for Roland and of Roland, is alloyed with grief. Then he tastes fresh salt as well, and realizes Roland too is weeping._

_Startled and chest full bursting with emotions he can barely name, Cuthbert pulls back, just as Alain whispers: “He’s coming home.”_

\--

In relief and sorrow, Cuthbert knows Roland will not remember the Candlelight Ride; all the tales that have led him home are only in his sleeping mind. 

When the sun rises, the towers of Gilead catch the first lights of dawn, and the glass ball in Roland’s hands flickers pink once more. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to a wonderful beta (to be named later).


End file.
